


Firsts

by soixantecroissants



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Dimples Queen, F/M, first curse au, some angsty times here and there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-27 02:23:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15676098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soixantecroissants/pseuds/soixantecroissants
Summary: A chance wrong turn in the hospital ward. A thief in a coma. A lion tattoo. First Curse AU. Based on prompts for OQ Angst Fest.





	Firsts

**Author's Note:**

> Written in a series of 100-word drabbles.

She came to the hospital often.

Just to keep an eye on her, at first. Mary Margaret, or whatever new, wretched name she’d been cursed with, as she tended the sick, the wounded, the just-as-cursed soulmate.

(It pleased Regina, the impossibility of any happy endings now.)

But one day, she detoured past a new wing, and there, in a wide-windowed room full of sunlight, she saw him.

A man whose face she didn’t know, but she would recognize him anywhere, impossibly so.

She’d only ever seen his tattoo.

And on that day, the clock tower hands began to inch forward.

…

Regina learned of his life, in pieces, starting with its not-quite-end. There’d been a robbery gone awry, the wrong end of a blade turned against him, and the owner of a pawn shop waiting to press charges if he ever woke up.

Her soulmate would be some kind of criminal.

But it was her magic that had pulled him under, not anything he’d ever done to deserve it, and did it really matter what was real, or wasn’t?

She could never allow him to wake up.

She had no choice, after all.

(She let herself believe it for a while.)

…

He had a son.

Mop-haired, and always bright-eyed with hope at his side, until one of the boy’s guardians came to retrieve him each day.

“Papa?” He’d pat a small hand to his cheek before going. “Can you please wake up tomorrow, please?”

“Pardon us, Madam Mayor,” his many uncles would say, but one of them had started to look too closely, too curious about her each time their eyes met.

Regina learned to keep her distance from them. She couldn’t stand for reminders of some family he’d never get back, this man who’d once been meant to be hers.

…

She made the mistake of lingering, one day.

When the boy turned that deep-dimpled grin on her, she didn’t know how to leave.

She tried to forget when he told her his name.

One day turned to two. Three. At some point, she stopped keeping track.

The clock tower ticked on. Was time moving forward, she wondered, or was it counting down instead?

She couldn’t stay any longer.

“Please don’t leave,” said the boy. “I don’t want to lose you, too.”

Regina thought of her Henry, of how she’d tried, of how he’d run.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she promised.

…

It was no longer her choice to make, in the end.

Every day the boy reminded her more of Henry, before, of cinnamon and comic book pages, the corners dog-eared to mark their place for tomorrow.

Every day she sat with them. Just sat with them and let them suffer.

Regina traced his tattoo when they were alone, and thought of what-ifs, of first fights and first other things, of learning to breathe, of growing old.

She wondered what color his eyes were.

What an odd thing, to have never known one another, when she’d already come to say goodbye.

…

She tried other things first. Obscure potions and spells, rare objects from her vault.

When the boy reached for her hand one day, she knew that she’d been stalling.

“Regina,” he said. “Please read it again.”

She turned the page to start over, but he fought another yawn, snuggling deeper against his father’s side.

“You need to rest. I’ll be right here.”

Regina gazed at the tattoo, that peaceful warmth of her soulmate’s slumber, wishing, for once, that their timing could’ve been right after all.

She bent down, already remembering too much, and pressed a kiss to his son’s forehead.

…

He opened his eyes.

They were blue, like sunlight touching the sea as the skies cleared and he gathered his son in his arms.

And then they were grey, clouding over again when he saw her. Like he knew.

Like he could never forget it.

“You’re…the Evil Queen!”

His son looked smaller, suddenly, fear now shrinking him away from her, or was she the one who’d stumbled back?

“Stay away from my boy,” he burst out, and it was nothing less than she deserved.

“Regina?” The boy’s eyes changed, as though remembering.

She dared to hope.

“Please leave us alone?”


End file.
